


Day and Night

by TigerDragon



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Smallville, Superman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Always-a-girl!Bruce, Co-workers, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Minor Violence, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's the guardian of Metropolis to do when some yahoo punches her way through his town? </p><p>Help, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day and Night

After living in Metropolis for a few years, Clark had learned that crime, injury and illness had surges and ebbs like all the other aspects of human life. Most of the time the explanation had more to do with forces of weather or sociology than any sort of central cause: summertime meant more sunburns, food poisoning was especially bad in late November, and the home team losing a big game caused a spike in domestic violence.

So the latest fashion in injuries hadn’t caught Clark’s attention right away--Metropolis was so big that even having superpowers couldn’t keep him aware of all the social currents. But when Jimmy said something about it in the elevator he knew he had to at least check it out.

As soon as he investigated the hospitals, he knew that there was nothing unfocused or generalized about the recent influx of beating victims into Metropolis’ emergency rooms. Years of ‘investigative reporting’ with Chloe had given Clark a keen eye for subtle patterns.

Okay, the x-ray vision helped, too.

He saw that the injuries never fell outside a certain range of parameters. The force and angles of impact, parts of the body, and bruising all came from the same fighting style, and from the same physical build. The times and locations of the attacks and profiles of the victims showed deliberate targeting and a tendency to be in one place at a time. Metropolis had a single new, extremely skilled, extremely methodical attacker. Clark didn’t like it, but was also relieved. You couldn’t arrest sociological forces. One person, no matter how skilled, was a piece of cake.

As soon as he could make an excuse, he slipped away from his human life and changed into the uniform for his other job. It didn’t take very long for Superman to find the new threat to his adopted city.

He was expecting a gang leader (a ninja gang leader? that didn’t sound right) or maybe someone’s mad science project. What he got was an urban legend - not even a Metropolis urban legend, either. When Lois had first read about “the Batman of Gotham City” in the _Gazette_ , she hadn’t been able to stop laughing. The whole idea, she said, was absurd.

Clark was used to absurd. He’d figured it was a rogue biochemical experiment or something. But the person backing an Intergang thug down an alley a block away from him (and a hundred or so feet down) wasn’t a ten-foot-tall bat creature with fangs. In fact, if you could see in the dark as well as Clark could, she (and it was definitely a she) was a pretty standard-issue human wearing a big black cape and an armored suit with... ears? ... on the helmet.

Apparently there was plenty of goth in Gotham.

Clark moved in closer, hovering a few yards behind the Bat. The gangbanger/cult member saw the blue and red and started backing up faster.

“Excuse me,” Superman said, “if this man has committed a crime, he is entitled to due process.”

“After I’m done with him, he can have all the due process he wants,” the Bat replied in a horrible, unearthly hiss that was probably pretty terrifying if you didn’t know it was computer generated and couldn’t hear the woman’s voice inside the helmet. Of course, pretty as it was, that had such a cold and crushed gravel tone that he almost wished he hadn’t heard it. It bothered him even more than the vocal mask.

“No,” he answered her. “You’ve put enough people in the hospital.” Grabbing the man and flying him to the nearest police station took about a minute, and when he got back to the alley, the Bat was still standing there, waiting with the sort of patience that he associated with celebrities expecting an interview. She was also, from the muffled sound of her heartbeat (unusually muffled - sound dampening in the armor?), angry with him.

“You,” she said coldly, “have just ruined a week’s investigative work and probably ensured that a container of advanced weapon is going to wind up in the wrong hands. Are you very proud of yourself?”

Clark opted for his strictly-business attitude. “Describe the weapons. I can scan the whole state for them.”

“The whole state.” She looked up at him, and her voice was amused. “So you object to non-permanent injury but are perfectly comfortable with privacy violation on a massive scale. That’s good to know. I’ll need more heavy metals.” She tapped her (opaque, even to his vision) helmet. “They’re a mix of things, but primarily a long bifurcated rifle with a smooth external casing...”

The description went on for a minute, carefully organized and precise. Her tone of voice didn’t warm up any. It didn’t help that she was right about the privacy thing. Being able to see and hear most anything meant that he knew far more than he should about far too many people. So much of it was involuntary that he just had to try to ignore most of it.

Physically hurting people, on the other hand - that, he could control.

He started looking for the weapons in the areas that had seen the most beating victims. Then he moved on to other areas of the city, and then further. He found them about two minutes after he started looking.

“About five miles southeast of town, on the move. A state road, not a freeway. I would guess they’re trying to make it to the river.”

“Thank you.” She tapped a concealed panel in the wrist of her left glove, and a whisper-silent machine that might have been mistaken for a motorcycle in dim light wove up through the streets to her like a well-behaved dog. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Then she mounted the bike, sweeping the cape out over the broad back of it in a way that had to have been designed, and went tearing off down the alley at a speed that was decidedly unsafe.

After a quick check, he decided that Metropolis didn’t currently need him.

A few minutes later, Clark couldn’t decide between being angry with her for driving like a maniac through his city or thankful that she was no longer in it. At least nobody else had been hurt so far.

She caught up to the convoy just a couple of miles from the river, _jumped off the bike onto the first truck_ , and then set about disabling one vehicle after another in fashions that were obviously not intended to protect the personal safety of the drivers and occupants but was at least careful of any potential additional traffic. The bike, meanwhile, cruised along in the dark behind the other vehicles and waited for her to get back on it. Or something. The woman had to be insane. If not the safety of others, she at least ought to care about her own!

Clark attended each disabled vehicle, simultaneously rescuing and disarming the occupants. It took only seconds to move them to either hospitals or Metropolis Central Police station, depending on their condition. The trucks themselves he took directly to Central’s impound lot, spent a few more seconds telling the officers about the weapons, and got back to the dark country road that contained at least one dangerously crazy person.

“You’re very helpful,” she noted acidly, having pulled the bike to the side of the road and leaned against it as though waiting for him. “Have you thought about how to find out who they were working for and with, now that you’ve dropped them in police custody? That is, I presume, where you put them?”

Clark resisted the urge to pull a face. “The ones who didn’t need the hospital,” he answered dryly. “And yes, I did think of how to track down the bigger operation, but I’m not sure why I should tell you.”

“I suppose that I could argue that it’s my case, but there’s no reason to expect _that_ bit of nicety to have any particular meaning to either of us.” Her gauntleted hand stroked the back of her bike slowly, almost fondly, but she didn’t take her eyes - deep blue, from what he could see through the lenses of her helmet - off of him while she spoke. “On the other hand, I already know about the bigger operation and have a strong idea of who’s running it. What I don’t have is confirmation or their key locations. So you can tell me nothing, and we both go about trying to fill in the holes in our knowledge independently, or you can tell me what you know and we can proceed on the basis of a more complete picture.”

Confirmation. At least she was a thorough maniac. You had to be prepared when taking on an organized crime organization all by yourself. “Sensible enough.” Then he was away in a blur and back before the Bat had changed position. Superman held out a duffle bag. “Their phones, a couple of laptops, IDs. I figured someone whose bike follows her around like a pet would know how to crack them.”

Was that a chuckle? It had sounded like a chuckle. Even a normal-person chuckle. Weird. She settled down by the side of the road, spreading out the evidence on a sterile plastic sheet, then took a tool that looked like a UV light but was crammed with way too much circuitry to be out of her belt, and ran it over the lot. Then she turned over each item carefully, examining the exterior casing and then dismantling the interior, depositing the remains of each piece of electronics in its own evidence bag before sealing up the whole thing and putting it into one of the compartments on her bike. “How’s your memory, boy scout?”

Clark almost shrugged before he remembered that Superman didn’t. “I can store everything I see or hear. Occasionally I have trouble accessing it.” Like French verbs, or Lois’s birthday, or that it had been too long since he called Mom.

“Well, then.” She launched into a list - at least two hundred and seventeen items long - of addresses and GPS coordinates and individual people, all of it delivered with the coldly methodical patience of a woman determined to get each detail correct. Then she paused, tapped her fingers on the bike and chuckled again. “Got that?”

He nodded. “I’m glad we met. This is clearly much bigger than just Gotham.”

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” Her voice turned dry. “I hate working in Metropolis. Too many lights.”

He couldn’t entirely suppress his smile. “Sorry we aren’t spooky enough for you.”

“Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot,” she replied, and he thought she might be smiling from the sound of her voice. “The theatrics matter. Why else would you take the time to be seen and photographed when you save people, except as a theatrical and inspirational exercise? Presuming that it isn’t simple vanity or the prelude to a run for office, of course.”

He snorted. “If it was vanity, do you think I’d be wearing my underwear on the outside?”

“That is a peculiar fashion choice.” Now he was pretty sure she was smiling. “I understand from the newspapers that it’s traditional on your homeworld, however.”

“The things we do for our sense of history.” He nodded to her bike. “Are there more addresses you’re looking in to, or are we splitting the list you gave me?”

“You’re pretty fast,” she said mildly. “I thought I’d let you clear the brush. It’d take me weeks to do it. It’ll take you... what, half an hour?”

“Depends on the circumstances. Tricky if there are hostages. But, yes, pretty fast.” He floated up, ready to start. “You know how to reach me.”

“Quite.” She lifted a hand and waved. “Good luck.”

It took, actually, a little more than two hours. The haul amounted to seventy-eight criminals, several hundred million dollars of illegal goods and an enormous pile of illegal weapons that would have to be destroyed. It was, in short, one of his better nights of work.

Of course, then he checked his phone and discovered that Bruno Mannheim, badly beaten and tied up with a note on which someone had written “For Superman, care of the MPD,” had been dropped off on the front steps of Central Booking with a flash drive of incriminating evidence tucked neatly in his breast pocket.

Clark sighed. What was it about him and crazy women?

* * *

Everyone knew that Wayne Industries was funding the housing redevelopment project in uptown New Troy, on the edges of Suicide Slum. Most everybody knew that Helen Wayne had been the prime mover behind that decision, too, at least if they followed the business journals. But nobody knew why, and it hadn’t exactly been easy to find out. There had been the grand groundbreaking ceremony, of course, attended by the whole board of directors of Wayne Industries and most of the city leaders of Metropolis. Miss Wayne had missed it, and her public relations assistant had explained in a long-suffering voice that the Gotham heiress had been unavoidably detained in Ibiza for the rest of the week. Then there has been an endless round of local comment meetings, social galas and political fundraisers.

Miss Wayne had missed those, too.

Maybe growing up friends with Lex Luthor had made him over-sensitive to mysterious philanthropy, but Clark couldn’t just let it lie. Even if her motives were perfectly innocent, maybe getting the exclusive for Mr. White would earn him some points.

So after a truly ridiculous number of phone calls, secretaries, and apologies, he finally managed to score an interview with Ms. Wayne. With a real date and time and everything.

It was his first time in Gotham as Clark Kent. He hadn’t exactly taken his time as Superman, either, so it was the first time he was really seeing the city, period.

It made the Bat make a lot more sense.

The contrasts of beauty and misery were stark, painful. Soaring architecture overshadowed drug deals and robberies, limousines glided past crumbling schools, and suits brushed past beggars without even seeing them. Metropolis had its beggars and its cold-hearted businessmen, too, but in his home the squalor was isolated and a perpetual work in progress toward its elimination. It seemed like no part of Gotham was free of desperation, like the whole city was being slowly eaten alive.

If he had come to Gotham from Smallville, Clark thought, he’d never stop being Superman.

The taxi from the train station was clean, if a bit ragged around the edges. Clark thanked the driver, tipped him too much, and stood on the sidewalk looking up at the gleaming tower of Wayne Enterprises. The company was behind many other charity projects, almost as many as the Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation, though that entity generally funded its beneficiaries much more deeply. If that hadn’t been the case, Clark would have felt outrage at its success amid wretchedness.

The lobby was all chrome and shining granite. In maximum bumpkin fashion, he found his way from the information desk, to the elevator, to the receptionist, to the waiting area just outside Ms. Wayne’s office. The secretary there offered him coffee, then went back to her work while the time ticked by. He’d been early, out of a habitual desire to get the lay of the land and because his mother had always insisted that promptness was the polite thing to do, but the time of the meeting came and went with no sign of Helen Wayne. The secretary got up, fifteen minutes past time, and asked him if he wanted some more coffee. Or a sandwich.

She looked apologetic, but not surprised.

He accepted. Of course, it was when his mouth was full of ham on rye that the subject of his interview showed up. Most of what he saw was what he expected - she was a tall woman, lean and wiry in a way that suggested her famously reckless interest in extreme sports kept her in exquisite shape, dressed in a suit that Lex would have approved of and wearing it in a way that suggested it had recently been on the floor somewhere. Her dark hair was rumpled, loose around her face, and she walked like a woman with nowhere in particular she needed to be. Well-connected, highly attractive and richer than God, she looked every inch the Princess of Gotham.

“Mmm Wnn,” he said, letting all of his real embarrassment show. She stopped at the secretary’s desk, seeming to ignore him, and gave the younger woman a slightly rakish smile.

The secretary sighed, smiled in a way that suggested she was charmed in spite of herself, and produced a leather folio from the desk. “Sign those,” she said, gently chiding, “or Lucius will be upset with me.”

“Can’t have that.” Helen’s voice was a laughing soprano that had all the devil-may-care enjoyment of life in the world in it. Something about it tickled his memory, but he couldn’t place anything. “I won’t forget, Sarah. Promise. I’m going to make a couple of calls... cancel my dinner, all right? Whoever it is can reschedule.” She started toward her office, running a hand through her hair to bring it back toward some sort of order. “And call Alfred. Tell him I’m going to need my new dress by midnight....”

Clark finally managed to swallow. “Excuse me, Ms. Wayne?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, expression irritated, and for a fraction of a second - not long enough that anyone else would have seen it, but he was used to watching people’s faces at speeds a digital camera would have envied - her face went completely blank as those dark blue eyes swept over him, top to bottom. Then she turned back toward the door, voice bored and restless. “Sarah, why is there a man in your office? Tell me he’s not your new boyfriend, please.”

“No, ma’am.” Sarah grinned as though at a particularly funny joke.

“Good. Hate to think you had such lousy taste. No manners. But why...”

“He’s Mister Kent, ma’am. With the _Daily Planet_? I told you he was coming yesterday.” The secretary smiled, all patient immovability.

“Oh.” Helen turned back and looked him over again, dismissively this time. “Tell the _Planet_ to send someone who knows how to dress, Sarah. That pretty one - what’s her name? Road or Street or ...”

“Lois Lane, ma’am?”

“Yes, her.”

“I have better manners than she does,” Clark offered. “And I only need a few minutes of your time, Ms. Wayne.” He knew those eyes, and that unlocked everything. He checked her skeletal structure just to be sure, and, yes--he’d know that pattern of healed breaks anywhere.  “I know how busy you must be with all your responsibilities.”

Sarah snickered, just a little bit, behind her hand. Helen looked him over, then made a show of her exasperated impatience as she turned to stalk into her office. “Fine. Close the door and pour me a drink, boy scout, and then you can have your few minutes. For the _Planet_ , you understand, which used to be a pretty good newspaper once upon a time.”

He wasn’t really surprised that she’d seen through him in a few seconds.

Nodding, he did her bidding, picking the bottle with the most recent liquor residue in the neck, and took out his tablet once he’d handed her the tumbler.

“Believe it or not, I really did just come for the development project interview,” he explained, watching the tension in her spine as she stared out the big windows.

“So this is what you do with the rest of your time.” She took a small sip of the whiskey, set it down on the table, and kept her eyes on the city spread out below them. Her pulse jumped a little, then steadied to a metronomic regularity. “A good way to keep an eye on what’s going on in the city, and to dig around where you can’t go charging in waving the family colors. Clever. How long did it take you to perfect that slouch? You take at least two inches off your height.”

“Couldn’t say,” he shrugged. It had been before high school. Even Lex hadn’t been totally sure about him. “I’ve been pretending to be unremarkable for a long time.” He glanced around the office. “I guess this answers the funding question. Nice touch with the extreme sports.”

“I needed to explain the occasional scars and less than occasional bruises. There’s also a rumor going around that I like ‘the rough stuff’ in bed. I didn’t plant it, but I’ve been encouraging it.” She smiled faintly, then turned around in her chair to look at him again. “The glasses are a good prop. Do you tint the lenses to reduce the vividness of your eyes yourself, or is it a natural outcome of the brand?”

“Got lucky.” He smiled softly. “You were right about the street lights. Gotham is a much better stage for your costume.”

“It took me a little while to realize I needed it. I had a very frustrating few months until then.” Leaning back in her chair, Helen Wayne studied him for a long minute before resting her fingertips against her lips. “I’ve been researching you since we met. The conventional wisdom about the timing of your arrival is wrong. You didn’t grow up on another planet - you grew up here. If your accent is anything to go by, somewhere in the middle west. Kansas or Nebraska. But I presumed that if you did have an alternate identity, it would be invented. Constructed. Clark Kent’s background goes back too far. Interesting choice.”

He pushed down a surge of anxiety. She was reckless, relentless, and scary, but his more rational self told him that Helen Wayne - the Bat - wouldn’t use his identity against him while he knew hers. Maybe not even if he didn’t.

“They’re kinda picky about things like fake IDs at the Planet,” he joked. “And... I’ve been Clark my whole life. I’m not giving it up until I have to.”

“Sentimental. And yet...” she smiled faintly, looking back out the window at the city and then up at the building around them, then shook her head. “Sometimes sentiment is what makes life worth living, isn’t it?”

He knew she’d lost her parents as a kid, and now he guessed it was probably one of the big reasons - if not _the_ reason - behind her night job. He was kind of glad to learn that she wasn’t a robot ninja after all.

“Pretty much the only thing. Well, that and pizza.”

She laughed softly, shaking her head, and smiled at him in a fond way that suggested he’d said something she recognized but didn’t share. “So. You know, and I know. You’re not going to arrest me, I’m not going to expose you. What else can I do for you, Mister Kent?”

He grinned and waved his tablet. “How about that interview?”


End file.
